


What Jeannie Saw

by hestia_lacey



Series: On the Pier [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hestia_lacey/pseuds/hestia_lacey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been less than two hours and there's probably less time than that again before sunrise, but despite the dark, quiet hour, the pale, moonlit calm of the city at rest, Jeannie can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Jeannie Saw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beadattitude](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=beadattitude).



It's been less than two hours and there's probably less time than that again before sunrise, but despite the dark, quiet hour, the pale, moonlit calm of the city at rest, Jeannie can't sleep.

It's stupid, really. Because intellectually she knows Meredith is okay; she'd read his charts and reviewed his scans, checked and double checked every reading and suspicious pixel until Dr. Keller's professionalism had been strained and stretched as thin as her patience and Jeannie had pushed her luck as far as even she dare. She had smoothed down the white cotton at Meredith's forehead, pressed a kiss to his temple, a pen into his restless hands, and gone to find John.

Because John was most definately not okay, and given the way he's tied himself up in Mer's life, inextricable, Jeannie needed to do something about that.

It's just that... there's this unrest beneath her breastbone, an anxious, persistent ache full of shadow and hindsight and a thousand alternate endings, a hollow, tender space that feels like the shape Meredith might make as he sleeps, so in the quiet, silver-splashed corridors she makes her way to the infirmary hoping that the sight of him might soothe the fluttering.

She steps quietly up to Meredith's doorway, consciously soft-moving, and is brought up short, shocked at the scene in front of her.

Jeannie walks through the door to Rodney's infirmary suite and registers three things:

1\. John Sheppard. Or rather, the back of John Sheppard's spectacularly mussed head, and the pale, familar fingers currently testing the texture of the dark strands wound between them.

2\. Hospital gowns absolutely do not cover as much of her brother as she'd like, especially not when he has his legs spread like that, framing John's narrow, thankfully clothed, hips.

3\. Meredith is looking right at her.

Meredith seems to come to this realisation at the same moment as Jeannie: his eyes widen comically, a bright flush creeping up his cheeks and he sputters; or at least, he makes an attempt at it but doesn't get very far. Jeannie rather suspects that whatever John's doing to his mouth is getting in the way of any decent stuttering he might otherwise spit out.

Meredith tugs John's hair in what Jeannie can only assume is an attempt to pull John out of the kiss. It's a fruitless effort with an unintended affect; John doesn't back off at all, but instead makes a small sound in the back of his throat and presses himself closer to Meredith, doing something with his tongue that makes an unbelievably dirty slick-slide sound and raising one knee to rest on the infirmary bed, spreading himself over Meredith's lap. Meredith's eyes flutter, and he makes a desperate, helpless sound, sliding his hands down the elegant slope of John's neck, digging his fingers into John's shoulders.

And oh my, but does that get a reaction: John pushes up from the floor with his free foot and tips himself forward, sending Meredith sprawling back onto the mussed covers. John Sheppard is straddling Meredith, kissing her brother in a way that makes her toes curl and oh this is wrong, wrong on so many, many levels but married or not Jeannie Miller has eyes and a pulse and a good grasp of physical laws and is firmly of the opinion that you'd have to be absolutely inert, completely dust dead not to find John Sheppard unfathomably attractive when he's doing nothing more than standing there, never mind things like... well, that.

It's the sound they both make when John settles into the cup of Rodney's hips that finally jolts Jeannie out of her daze. Because yes, there's the mouth and the eyes and the hips, but it's also her brother and she thought she'd never have to overhear that particular noise from Mer ever again after he moved out of their parent's house for college.

And it's just dawning on her how much fun she could have with this. Jeannie allows herself a small smile before she wipes her face carefully blank and clears her throat quietly.

She isn't really sure what happens next: John starts at the sound, moves more quickly than she thought humanly possible and is somehow standing upright, feigning ease at Mer's bedside in a blink. His hair is in a more advanced state of disarray than it usually is, his shirt is hanging loose and his lips are pink and damp but in the early-dark shadows you'd have to look close to see anything amiss, closer again to understand the signs. John wouldn't let people get a first look, Jeannie knows.

Meredith is still sprawled out across the twisted sheets, flushed and panting and mussed and yeah, Jeannie really wished she'd never have to catch her brother like that again. Mer's glazed, stunned look is kinda endearing though.

Jeannie lets her eyes flick over him, then over to John and back again. Crosses her arms, raises her eyebrow.

Meredith flushes again, gathers the sheets into his lap and clutches one corner of the blanket to his chest, looking every inch the ravished maiden. Jeannie has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing and what she wouldn't give for a camera right now...

After a suitably excrutiating pause in which she can actually see Meredith winding himself higher and higher, she breaks the awkward silence.

"I came to see if you were okay," she says.

"Um..." Mer manages, and then, "Well, I'm, ah, y'know. Good." He makes a gesture with the hand clutching the blanket and fumbles when he almost drops the sheet.

"So I can see," she replies in her steel plated mom-voice. Rodney winces and Jeannie rolls her tongue back to hold in the sudden desire to giggle like a lunatic.

Leaving her brother for a moment, she turns to John who drops his head, blushing, and actually scuffs the floor, like he's pure as the driven snow, like he hadn't just been writhing all over her brother with the tongue and the moaning and the straddling. Like Jeannie hadn't had a very good view of the proceedings.

"I can't say anything?" she asks John, eyebrow arched just so.

"Yeah..." John says, "I kinda... I might have, um..." and then trails off because it's obvious to everyone present what John was 'kinda' doing, and fairly evident to Jeannie what 'might have, um' had she not stepped in when she did.

"So I see," she says, finally letting her smile free, letting warm amusement leak into her words.

John looks up at her then, gives her that brilliant, sky-wide smile, doesn't hide it away this time and Jeannie can't breathe for a moment because it's incandescent, he's glowing like a sunrise. When she looks over to Mer, she finds him transfixed, mesmerised by the light in John Sheppard, the light he put there and she thinks that now might be a good time to leave.

Crossing the room, she pulls John down into an brief hug, laughing when he lifts her bodily from the floor and spins with her until she's dizzy, until she has to tuck her face into his neck or risk her eyes rolling out of her head.

"See?" she says into the hollow behind his ear.

"Thank you," he whispers back, and Jeannie can't help the way she fills up at that because, Jesus, boys. How they ever survived this long is beyond her. She thinks Teyla might have a lot to do with that.

Rodney clears his throat pointedly behind them. With a snort, Jeannie steps away from John and up to Mer's bedside.

"Married," Rodney says, scowling. Jeannie grins as she smacks him upside the head and comes back with "Stupid."

John's muffled laughter is at her back as she turns to leave the room, the aching, hollow place that drew her here all filled up with something warm and bright and hopeful.

As she rounds the corner she hears Meredith's voice:

"In front of my sister... Oh my God, you didn't see a camera or anything did you? Because she would totally do that to me."

Jeannie thinks she might be able to sleep now.


End file.
